How African leaders spend our money - part 3 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

'Why target Yengeni alone?' the opposition's Bantu Holomisa said at the time. The President himself test-drove a similar one for six months.' The following year Muammar Gaddafi gave Mbeki an S600L as a present. ANC officials claimed the President was 'truly embarrassed', but did he refuse the gift?

One of the most flagrant abuses of 'good governance' in Africa today is occurring in Kenya - original home of the WaBenzi. After decades of dictatorship voters in December 2002 swept Mwai Kibaki to power at the head of his NARC rainbow coalition on an anti-corruption ticket. 'Corruption will now cease to be a way of life in Kenya,' Kibaki promised. The very first law Kibaki's parliament passed rewarded politicians with a 172 per cent salary increase. MPs' take-home pay is now about £65,000 per annum (compared with a British MP's £57,485 gross) and the Kenyan MPs' fat package of allowances includes a £23,600 grant to buy a duty-free car, together with a monthly £535 fuel and maintenance allowance.

These grants fall way short of what many politicians actually spend on their official and private cars, Kibaki's ministers especially. Soon after taking power the government spurned its 'corrupt' predecessors' Mercedes E220 models and upgraded with the purchase of 32 new vehicles for top officials, including seven for the Office of the President. Most of these were new E240s, while the minister in charge of Kenya's dilapidated roads, Raila Odinga, went for a customised S500 at a probable cost of £100,000. Not to be outdone, Kibaki got himself - you guessed it - the S600L limousine.
How can Kibaki spend up to £350,000 on a car when Kenyans' average annual per capita income is £210 - less than the cost of a box of decent cigars? His purchase is legal because parliament approved it, but does that make it acceptable when Kenya is on the bones of its arse and demanding more aid?

Ministers say they should be paid so well because it stops them taking bribes. But the British High Commissioner to Nairobi, Sir Edward clay, last year denounced the ruling 'Mount Kenya Mafia' as gluttons who were so overfed they left the signs of their theft in their trail as clearly as if they had puked up. He said, 'The evidence of corruption in Kenya [amounts to] vomit, not just on the shoes of donors but also all over the shoes of Kenyans . . . and the feet of those who can't afford shoes.'

In February this year clay boldly produced another set of accusations, alluding to the fact that about £550 million has been stolen since Kibaki's government assumed power two years ago. Kenyan ministers responded by accusing the British envoy of being a white colonialist whom nobody need listen to. Britain is the nasty former colonial power that has just increased aid massively in 2005-06, from £30.5 million to £50 million. Despite the corruption alarm bells going off in Kenya, Blair's government has ruled out suspending aid.

Does any of this sound familiar? That's right: by deploying the WaBenzi co-efficient you can see that more aid equals more Mercedes-Benzes. Take a look at Kenya's 2005-06 budget, read out by finance minister David Mwiraria to a cheering parliament in Nairobi on 8 June. According to the local Daily Nation, the government has allocated £3 million for the purchase of a fleet of new vehicles for the Office of the President. A further £2.9 million has been set aside for the maintenance of the existing car-pool of vehicles. One has to wonder if this expenditure of nearly £6 million, no doubt a lot of it on Mercedes-Benzes and far in excess of the sums involved in Malawi's 'Benz Aid' scandal, has anything to do with the increased aid supply.